2016/04/21 by Bruce Haynes, Geoffrey Burgess · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Psychology
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199373734.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2016/04/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Abstract What is rhetorical music? This book illustrate the vital place of rhetoric and eloquent expression in the creation and performance of Baroque music. Through explorations of the cantatas of J.S. Bach, the chapters expose the conventional notion of historical authenticity in music, proposing adventurous new directions to reinvigorate the performance of early music in the modern setting. Along the way, the book investigates intersections between music and oratory, dance, gesture, poetry, painting and sculpture, and offer insights into figural elaboration, articulation, nuance and temporality. This book is the fruit of the combined wisdom of two musicians renowned equally for their contributions as performers and scholars. The book starts by positing that modern performance has lost sight of its primary function: pathopoeia or the arousal and stilling of passions. It explains how the roles of composer and performer in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries differed from how we think of them today, and introduces the source texts that is used in the chapters. It introduces the term rhetorical music and style as the corpus of works created during the period when classical rhetoric was the governing paradigm for artistic creation and communication. Emphasis is placed on the difference between early modern theories of the passions and modern psychological understandings of emotion.